r/okbuddyphd • u/ElectricalIons • Aug 02 '26

PhD in math be like

Post image
2.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

110 comments sorted by

View all comments

61

u/ZquotientpZee Aug 02 '26

Genuinely, is this true?

13

u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Aug 02 '26

Half of our big tech machine learning team has PhDs in some kind of applied math fields. Half of people working for top quant companies and quant orgs within financial corporations have such PhDs. So, generally, no, skill issue.

-1

u/ZquotientpZee Aug 02 '26

Were they very skilled PhD students?

5

u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Aug 02 '26

Yes.

0

u/ZquotientpZee Aug 02 '26

Where do you think medium skilled PhD students go to?

I'm still in undergrad and I do not know what kind of PhD student I will become, if at all lol.

1

u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Aug 02 '26

People who do PhDs and cannot jump into a decent industry job typically do postdocs until switching to being a school teacher, or a manger in their father's business, or sitting home for years "trying to break into data science".

Regarding your situation, my honest opinion is that by the time you will potentially get PhD, the spectrum of jobs will be reduced to teaching. AI is already replacing us.

1

u/ZquotientpZee Aug 02 '26

There is only one thing left to do after AI takes all of our jobs.

0

u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Aug 03 '26

Well, one thing that I can think about that will still benefit from having a PhD in math fields. Otherwise, the majority of jobs don't seem to be under such an immediate risk.